Well, it felt like I was busy…

After breakfast, I made a to-do list for the day.

I rode 13 miles to the Lincoln Memorial. I was going to ride to the gym which is only four miles away but the weatherman said it would start raining about 1 pm and I wanted to get a warm dry ride in.

Of course, it didn’t rain. So I rode back to the gym. Because of new nerve problems in my legs, I decided to lay off the leg machines. Instead of doing two circuits on all the machines, I did three circuits on the upper body and core machines. This was probably not a good idea. For a start, my right foot went numb after I used the first machine (a shoulder raise gizmo).

I stuck with my plan. I arrived a little before 11 am. The people in the weight room were all business. There was no chatter, no sitting around. So I made it out of there by 1 pm without having to wait at all.

My upper body was a tad annoyed with me. I could hear my biceps saying “You are such an asshole” all the way home on Little Nellie.

Gym and bike ride done!

Next came lunch. Then a clock reset-a-thon. I have four bike computers, three different kinds. So I had to find out how to do the deed without obliterating other settings. After about 1/2 hour I succeeded. In the process, I saw that my computers have over 112,000 miles on them. Whoa.

Reset the bike computers. Done!

Next up were the clocks in the cars. Done!

Then I took a picture of a foundation wall crack in the back of the house and emailed it to a contractor who knows about such things. He emailed me back to tell me to keep and eye on the cracks. They are probably caused by the marine clay soil under the house drying out from the summer with very little rain. I am taking his advice because I can do nothing like a champ.

Deal with foundation cracks. Done!

Laundry was next. Done!

Bill paying. Done!

Check book balancing. Done!

I meditated for 30 minutes. Done!

The only things I haven’t done are shredding (our file cabinet is bursting at the seams) and read my Fredrik Backman book.

So what do you do when you retire? All the crap that you cram into the evenings.

Still, it didn’t feel like I accomplished much.

I’ll try again tomorrow.

Cider and Elbow

I usually have a tough time thinking of gift ideas. Every so often a good gift idea pops into my head but more often than not, my gift ideas are duds. Sometimes unintentionally. I bought Mrs. Rootchopper a certificate for a massage at her favorite massage place. It closed a month later. I bought her a gift certificate to an ice cream parlor. It closed within months.

Last spring I was put to the test. Her birthday, retirement, and Mothers Day fell within one month of each other. Somewhere in there I bought her tickets to see Elbow at the 9:30 Club in DC. (Elbow is a band from Manchester, England. Like my man Neil Finn, they’re much bigger in the UK than here.) We’d seen Elbow two or three times before. They seem to fit the 9:30 like a glove. The concert was last night.

As luck would have it, WABA’s Cider Ride was held during the day. So I got up and drove to the start at daybreak. Having helped put the cue sheets together Thursday evening, I kept one for myself. (It was an extra or so my conspirator told me.) This meant I could leave before the official 8:30 start time.

Off I went. Having done this course twice before and being absolute shit at cue sheet reading, I made numerous wrong turns. (I blame the folks in Maryland and their utterly confusing trials.)

Little Nellie and I had quite a good time cruising under the fall foliage along the Anacostia River and through and beyond the USDA farmland north of the Beltway. There were pits stops with donuts and cider at one and pie and hot cocoa at another. In keeping with my recent dietary restraint I refrained from hoovering all the foods.

The ride concluded with a cruise down the east bank of the Anacostia, into the Hill East and Capitol Hill neighborhoods, and back to the start along the Metropolitan Branch Trail.

Most rides have after parties. Usually they are duds, but WABA seems to have a special talent for these things. Riders gathered at the Dew Drop Inn. There was a great disturbance in the Force. I saw somehow managed not to see a single Katie. I did, however, talk with two Graces and two Rachels. There was also Kathy, Steve, Tara, Michael B., Jeff, Sam, Tyler, Ted, Adam, Greg, Ursula, Kristin, and undoubtedly others whose names escape me.

It took forever to get out of there because I kept bumping into someone I knew. I arrived home in time to clean up, grab a bite, and drive right back into the city for the concert. We had to wait about 30 minutes in the rain to get in but once we did we had a blast. The 9:30 is a small venue and Elbow owns it. They had the crowd signing their songs all night. At one point they had the men in the audience sing 9. All in one note. Then the women sung 30. Somehow it came out in harmony! How the hell did that happen? Very cool.

In one strange moment, someone in front of me stuck their cell phone in their back pocket, facing outward. It glowed through the fabric as if their right butt cheek was radioactive. (I swear I was sober. My mind just works in strange ways.)

When we arrived home I could barely stand. I had spent 3 1/2 hours standing on concrete after riding 53 miles. My legs were a wreck. I took some ibuprofen and slept for 9 hours. I got my money’s worth out of my Saturday.

The return to standard time saved my Sunday which included reading newspapers from the last two days, finishing a book, taking a nap, and doing a gentle 22 mile recovery ride.

Tomorrow is another day at the gym. This time I’ll skip the leg machines. The weight lifting is causing nerve entrapment in my legs causing sharp pain at night and numbness during the day. I think it’s time to start up my physical therapy exercises again.

Age is all in your head, except for the part that the legs go first.

Big thanks to the folks at WABA and the volunteers who made the Cider Ride a big success.

Weights and Lights

No matter what I do, lifting weights makes me want to throw up. I have no idea why. A few hours later I feel great but immediately afterward I feel like calling Ralph on the porcelain phone.

I rode eight miles to the gym which is four miles from my house. The shortest path between two points may be a straight line, but Archimedes never rode a bike in the fall in Mount Vernon.

I did two rounds on the equipment. I am being very careful. I choose a weight that I can raise and lower slowly for 10 to 12 repetitions. So far, so good. I also found out what the mystery workout station is for. This station has no weights. It turns out you are supposed to drape your upper body over a padded bar, then raise your upper body upward. And repeat. Sure thing. Not in my lifetime. They probably use this “exercise” at Gitmo.

There is one station where you hang by your forearms then raise and lower your knees to your chest. Sweet mother of god. My tummy hurts when I do this.

I rode home, had a late lunch, then hit the road again. This time I rode to the Crystal City bike light giveaway, sponsored by the Crystal City Business Improvement District. I was a bit early. I picked up a few lights then hung out to see if I knew anybody who showed up. Of course, I couldn’t remember the name of the first person. She’s Chris. I’ve met her a few times before. My brain, once again, just locked up. The next person to show up was Chris. This Chris rode his folding cargo bike. He’s an old Friday Coffee Clubber.

The next person I met was a reader of this blog. He looked familiar. We chatted for about ten minutes. When he told me his name was Ken I knew I knew him, but couldn’t remember when or where we met. It turns out Ken rode some of the final miles with me (and Big Ed) at the tail end of my Pittsburgh to DC tour in 2015.

After about an hour, I headed home to get ready for tonight’s final game of the World Series. It’s been one for the ages.

Make It Stop – Another Monster Month

With the last 776 miles of my tour and another 500 miles of riding around home, October waved the white flag. 1,226 miles. And I’m not the least bit tired. I do need to get away from my immediate environs or I will start to get bored.

For the year I’ve ridden 8,754 miles. That’s about 600 miles more than I rode all of last year. And I have two months left. If I average 21 miles a day, I could get to 10,000.

Dang.

Fall in Mount Vernon

After an early morning recon ride in the car with Mrs. Rootchopper, I went back on my bike to take some pictures of the local fall foliage. Fort Hunt Park has several maples that put on a show for about a week every autumn.

And with the river, the foliage, and the angled sunlight, the Mount Vernon trail is simply beautiful.

There are a few more on Flickr.

Weighty Things

My plan was to get up early to go to the gym and life weights. The Astros and the Dodgers had other things in mind. Game 5 of the World Series was supposed to be a tidy pitchers’ duel. Instead it was a slug fest. Houston won 13 – 12 in 10 long innings. I pretty sure there were at least four standing 8 counts. You could almost hear the players saying, “Yeah, Well…TAKE THAT!” as they exchanged home runs. Big fun.

Long story short, I woke up a tad later than planned. As it turned out, this was not entirely a bad thing because temperatures dropped about 20 degrees from yesterday. And it was windy. Fall has arrived and, boy, does it feel great.

I managed to make the four-mile ride to the gym into eight miles. I let the breeze push me down the Mount Vernon Trail before turning back. Then I had to face it. The dreaded weight room. I know, I know. Weight bearing exercise is good for you. It especially good for people like me who do little more than non-weight-bearing exercise and who have ripened a bit.

I did one circuit through the machines, mostly to figure out how to set them up. It was pretty funny that one some machines I wasn’t sure which way to face, toward or away from the machine. And there was one work station without any weights at all that had no instructions. I had no idea what the heck to do with that.

After my first go round, I did another circuit. I made sure to use less weight than I might normally and to move the weight very slowly. I hope I don’t ache tomorrow. Even with low weight, I had the same result I usually have from weight lifting: I felt like throwing up when I was done.

The good news is my ribs didn’t hurt. The bad news is my left tricep is messed up. It wasn’t the weights. My father had rotator cuff problems beginning at about my age. Thanks Dad.

After the weights, I went for what I planned to be a 22-mile ride. One thing led to another and I found myself riding The Mule all over the place: across the Potomac on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, up Oxon Hill past the casino, back down to the river at Oxon Hill Farm, back up the hill to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. I took MLK to Howard Road. Then I got on the Anacostia River Trail. I rode a few miles north then crossed the river and came south all the way to the soccer stadium being built at Buzzards Point.

Then I made my way to The Wharf where I rested in a swing and took in the sights on a perfect fall day.

The ride home on the Mount Vernon Trail was a breeze.

When I arrived a package greeted me.

The package also included a book (Britt Maire Was Here by Fredrik Backman) and another CD, Little Fictions by Elbow (I am going to their DC concert on Saturday).

The Mule Abides – Again

After ragging about the mechanical delays in getting The Mule back on the road, I thought it would be a good idea to take it for a ride and see if the darn thing works.

Yup.

I rode to Arlington by way of Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood. The weather was splendid. The Mule and I get along about as well as bike and rider possibly can. All the shifts were true. All the braking was bueno. (I had severely toed-in my brake pads. They were silent, but they were rather lame in the stopping department. Now I have stoppage.)

I even gave the granny gear a good work out by riding up South Walter Reed Drive, a steep hill that never, ever ends. I took a couple of big gulps of water before I started up the darned thing. Bad idea. Nearly saw that water again near the top. For the last 50 yards all I could think of was “Who’s idea was this?” It would have been wise to take a couple of hits of albuterol but clearly my brain function was not at optimal levels. Near the top I was hurting so bad that I didn’t even notice any pain in my ribs.

(Ribs update: the exterior bruise is gone but the area is still sore to the touch. At least I can roll over in bed without pain waking me up. I think I will begin doing my back and physical therapy exercises again tomorrow – oh, how I hate them. They are yoga-ish. Also, Monday I have a date with the weight machines at the gym.)

The rest of the ride felt a little off. I had moved the saddle forward just a touch because I noticed that I was riding on the nose of the saddle during my tour. I addition to stretching the leather on the saddle, I was compressing a nerve in my perimeum causing sharp stabbing pains after about 30 miles. This doesn’t float your boat when your riding 80 miles in a day, believe me.

Today I rode 32 miles and had no pains but now my lower right back isn’t happy. My working theory is that moving the saddle forward resulted in a slight up-tilt causing my back to bow a bit. So I adjusted the nose down one click on the saddle adjustment mechanism.

I did notice one thing that was off about the bike. The stem (the piece that connects the handlebars to the bike) is on crooked. I probably knocked it off line when The Mule and I took a tumble in La Belle, Florida. It’s pointing about 5-10 degrees left of center. This is easy to fix, except that I need to loosen the stem but and the stem bolt is rusty. Won’t budge. I sprayed it with some oil. Maybe it will free up.

Long story short, the bike is in pretty great shape. No additional work is needed. I might take Rando Mike up on his offer to install a generator hub/light system on The Mule. He’ll do the work. I pay for the parts. And buy the beer.

This could get expensive.

I Should Have Practiced More

Retirement is hard. I’m having trouble getting into the flow. Take today, for example. I completely forgot that it’s Friday. On Friday’s I get up really early and ride to Friday Coffee Club. I slept until 7:45. Then I made a pot of coffee, sat down to a bowl of cereal, and read the paper. Mrs. Rootchopper walked into the kitchen and said, “No Friday Coffee Club?”

Fail.

In my defense, it is that time of year when the low humidity and cool temperatures make for perfect sleeping. In the aftermath of the bike tour and with my rib still healing, my body just wants rest. So I am feeding the beast.

Each day, though, I have a plan to do one or two specific things. On Tuesday it was volunteer at WABA in the evening. Don’t tell Greg but we didn’t get a damned thing done once Kristin cracked open the tequila. Anyway, since the WABA office is 16 miles from home, volunteering also means a pretty decent bike ride. (On the way home I encountered several people headed to the High Heel Race in Dupont Circle. I didn’t want to say anything but I think some of these women were, um, not. Women, that is. A couple could play wide out for pro football teams. And they could go a little lighter on the make up and sequins. Just saying.)

Today, after waiting for the temperature to rise, I rode the Cross Check to the Lincoln Memorial. Just because. And it was super nice out. And the trees are turning. Like this one across the river from the Memorial.

Image may contain: tree, sky, plant, outdoor and nature

On the way home I pulled over to record another odometer milestone.

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Not bad.

I’ll put the Cross Check away for a few weeks and give my other bikes some attention.

Once I got home, I mowed the lawn. Mowing the lawn feels like you are accomplishing something even when you really aren’t.

Then I went inside and did something I’ve been meaning to do since I got home. During my bike tour to Key West, hurricane Maria made landfall on the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Two of my BikeDC friends (who, incidentally, don’t know each other) are from Puerto Rico. They each spent many anxious days not knowing the fate of their families. (From what I can tell, all are accounted for and out of immediate danger.) A week or so later, I started riding in southern Florida. Even a month after hurricane Irma made landfall in the Keys, the devastation was obvious. I simply cannot imagine what the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are like. So today I made a donation to the American Red Cross. You can too. Here’s the site.

http://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/disaster-relief/hurricane-relief/hurricane-maria-relief-information#Domestic-Response

There Ought to Be a Word

Did you ever notice that a random thing brings a particular person to mind?

I’m not talking about physical or personality traits. We all associate certain hair colors or hair styles, a laugh, or a mannerism with particular people.

Lately though I’ve noticed that I associate certain meaningless random things with particular people in my life.

Dark gym shorts with white trim.

Mayonnaise.

Almonds.

Plastic straws.

Pool noodles.

Painters pants.

All natural peanut butter.

Ankle bracelets (what the wearer told me was “shock repellent” until I realized in her Boston accent it was “shark repellent”)

I see these things all the time and they evoke one person in my mind. (In the case of almonds and plastic straws, it’s the same person.)

These associations only really come to mind when I have the object in view.

Is there a word for these sorts of things?

Be Careful Out There

Last week a cyclists from out of town took a bike ride through Old Town Alexandria. He was headed for the southern part of the Mount Vernon Trail. His ride ended in an ambulance. He is in a local hospital in critical condition.

When the Woodrow Wilson bridge was being replaced, I bitched up a storm about the detours and the design of the trails that went beneath it. Both reflected a complete lack of understanding of bicycling. I focused on bollards that were painted black. And I described treacherous detours that changed by the week. One week there was gravel. Then next asphalt that gave way under the weight of a bike. There were sharp 90 degree turns in the dark. And on and on.

The Washington Area Bicyclists Association and folks from the Alexandria Bike Pedestrian Advisory Committee gathered officials from a number of agencies who were responsible for various aspects of the project. These included Alexandria city, the National Park Service, VDOT, and DHS. They walked these officials through the project and pointed out safety concerns and discussed design changes. Many changes were made including painting the bollards bright yellow and putting reflective material on them.

The bollards are part of an extensive security perimeter that is designed to keep vehicle bombs from blowing up the bridge. The bridge carries I-95 and the Beltway across the Potomac River so this perimeter is obviously justified. (The old bridge had no such protection. ) Other features of the perimeter include huge boulders, stout fences, significantly, a movable gate across the southern end of South Royal Street.

The gate is a metal bar that spans the width of the street. When a driver wants access, he enters a code into a keypad at the gate. The metal bar then descends into a metal slot in the pavement. Both the top and bottom of the gate and the area along the slot are painted yellow. When the vehicle has crossed the gap, the metal bar rises to block further access.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. After they installed the gate, it was often out of commission. Crews worked on it on and off. Every so often I’d see the gate was open and I’d ride through it. The alternative is a 20-yard-long side path that has three bollards across it. Why got through a narrow path when you don’t have to?

The cyclist from out of town rode toward the bridge. He saw an open gate. He rode through it. Either the bar was sitting above the slot or it was rising as he reached it, perhaps visually obscured by the yellow paint of the bar and the slot. And potentially shaded by the bridge or two large trees to either side of the street.

He hit the bar and went flying. He broke two vertebrae in his neck. As of this morning, a week later, he was still in critical condition at a local hospital. His wife was following him. She also hit the bar and fell but her injuries were not as severe.

Note that there are no warnings to cyclists that the open gate is a road hazard. No paint on the road surface or signs direct cyclists to the side path. Long story short, you might want to use the side path.

I hope the cyclist recovers.

The security gate as seen from a south bound cyclist on South Royal Street.

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